Managerial flexibility versus employee-friendly flexibility: the internal labour market of Taiwan’s civil service

Abstract

This article addresses the highly flexible internal labour market of Taiwan’s civil service that is quite different from the corresponding labour markers in the West. In contrast to managerial flexibility that is popular in the West, Taiwan’s system – as employee-friendly flexibility – allows for a high degree of flexible choices in job transfers for junior civil servants. The system, which has not been influenced by ideas of new public management, is conducive to a high degree of job mobility for civil servants during their early career paths. On the positive side, this job mobility broadens the experiences of civil servants for career advancement, mitigates conflicts caused by a poor person-environment fit, breaks through the promotion bottleneck, and helps the state retain talent. On the negative side, it makes manpower planning difficult, causes an internal brain drain, and encourages withdrawal behaviour. An analysis of it contributes to the understanding of public human resource management in a non-Western context, which shows a different logic of development from the West.

Keywords:

• civil service system
• internal labour market
• management flexibility
• flexible job transfers
• Taiwan

Acknowledgement

This research article was gratefully sponsored by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan (MOST 104-2410-H-004 -095-MY2).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. At the beginning of the Republic of China, the 9-grade ranking system fitted into three official ranks: grades 1 to 2 lay in the senior rank; grades 3 to 5 in the junior rank; and grades 6 to 9 in the elementary rank. During the early years of the Kuomintang rule in Taiwan, it remained a 9-grade system, but each rank contained three grades.

2. The data are divided into two sets: one is from the cohorts recruited from the general CSEEs in 2005–2010, and the other is from those recruited from the special examination for local governments in 2003–2010.

3. According to the authors’ preliminary estimate, only 1% of vacancies available in the ILM are senior rank positions.

4. See the news at: http://tcc9508.tcc.gov.tw/News_Content7.aspx?n=98AA49140128347C&sms=201E6BBD76D1B42E&s=C8C66901A28807A0.

5. For example, the voluntary turnover rates in the Federal government of the United States in recent years ranged from 5.4% in 2015 to 6.7% in 2017: see https://www.fedsmith.com/2018/03/22/turnover-workers-quit-federal-government/.

6. See the advocacy for removing the authority at: https://join.gov.tw/idea/detail/37582e74-548f-4b82-89fa-8d95e6d61253/endorse?page=13&size=20&sort=updateDate, DESC .

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan [MOST 104-2410-H-004 −095-MY2].